


Green Thumb

by Trumpeteer34



Series: Prompt Fills [10]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner-centric, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Headcanon, The Fugitive Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8612626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trumpeteer34/pseuds/Trumpeteer34
Summary: Bruce Banner loves to garden.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of the named/recognizable characters present. They belong to Marvel. Other recognizable things belong to their respective owners. This was written purely for fun.

Bruce Banner loves to garden.

“Looks like you don’t even need to be big and mean to have a green thumb,” Tony jokes when he sees a small collection of sprouts sitting near the window with one of the potted plants Bruce added to the lab a few weeks into his stay at the Tower. 

Bruce just smiles but doesn’t respond.

While on the run from General Ross and the U.S. Government, Bruce Banner took lots of different jobs. He worked as a mechanic in Brazil and as a medic in India, but sometimes, it just felt best to work the earth with his hands. He’d travel to areas along farmlands during the harvest season, when his labor could be paid with a meal in the evening and a place to sleep at night.

He’s harvested ulluco in Peru, vanilla beans in Indonesia, and guar in Pakistan. He’s helped plant rice seedlings, and then roughly three months later was back to help with the harvest. He’s walked purple fields of lavender in Xinjiang, helping a family of farmers harvest acres of the flowers. He’s wandered around different countries in Africa, lending a hand to anyone with a need for labor. This kind of hard work was always a welcome break from his travels; he liked being able to offer help, but he loved working with his hands. Being able to use his hands to help something living grow instead of destroying it helped lift him from dark places in his mind each and every time he was able to do this kind of work. Actually growing something instead of killing it gave him the kind of peaceful fulfillment he craved— _needed_ —in his years on the run.

In the third floor apartment he and Betty had shared in grad school, he had kept a balcony garden. Betty would watch with a bemused little smile on her face as Bruce pointed out buds on a flowering eggplant or how this tomato was a little bigger than the day before, or how in a week or so the lavender sprouts sitting in the window of their bedroom would be ready to be potted. Having a collection of potted plants along the balcony came as a welcome distraction when he needed a break from his thesis. On hard days as a teacher’s aide, he could retreat outside to tend to the plants. Having something to do with his hands that didn’t require a pen and paper was cathartic in a sense.

He remembers a time, a long time ago, when he would eagerly help his mom in their front garden. There were her rose bushes and zinnias, her marigolds and pansies, her lilies and—one time at his request—a sunflower. Her favorite, though, had been her lavender plants. Whenever he thought back to the excitement that had overtaken her when the lavender had sprouted each year, a tranquil happiness would warm him through and through.

So when Tony takes him up to the rooftop of the tower a few weeks later to show a plotted area off to the side, a small smile slowly blossoms across his face. When he glances over at Tony, the man only offers a shrug. “I don’t know what your suite looks like, but if it’s anything like the window sills in the lab, you really need an actual garden. Your green thumb is out of control.”

Bruce looks closer at the garden plots, which have not been filled with dirt yet. His mind is already mulling over all the different things he can grow up here with so much sunlight. “I…I don’t know what to say, Tony. Thank you.”

“I just don’t want to walk into the lab one day and get eaten by Audrey 2, y’know?” Tony replies airily, but the pleased look on his face bespeaks the thrill of having a gift be well-received.

“I cringe to think what my blood would do to an alien plant,” Bruce replies, but he’s smiling.

The next day, he takes the lavender sprouts from the lab up to the roof to be properly planted. Over the years, lavender has become his favorite flower. Whenever his plants begin to blossom, he’s sent back to that moment when he was a boy, witnessing the happiness on his mom’s face at having successfully raised the plant from seed. He gets that same happy satisfaction now, warmth spreading through him at the thought that he can raise this plant from seed with his hands, hands that have seen so much pain and destruction along the way, hands that are _still_ used for pain and destruction, but are still able to help coax a plant to life.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on tumblr about Bruce Banner headcanons, and then this just kind of poured out of me.


End file.
